What have we learned about health care policy? What are reform pathways forward?

Dr. Suri discusses with Dr. Stephen Sonnenberg how a healthy society makes for a healthy democracy.

Zachary sets the scene with his poem, “Dear Doctor”.

Stephen Sonnenberg has served as clinical associate professor of

psychiatry at Howard University College of Medicine, adjunct clinical

professor of psychiatry at Cornell University Medical College, clinical

professor of psychiatry at George Washington University School of

Medicine and clinical professor of psychiatry at Baylor College of

Medicine. He is currently adjunct professor of psychiatry at The

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda,

Maryland, where he served as clinical professor before moving to Texas.

At The University of Texas at Austin, he is professor of

psychiatry, population health, and medical education at Dell Medical

School, adjunct professor in the School of Architecture, Fellow of the

Trice Professorship in the Plan II Honors Program, and principal

investigator of the National Endowment for the Humanities-funded

Patients, Practitioners, and Cultures of Care Project, a research and

development effort to create a new undergraduate Bridging Disciplines

Program emphasizing the relationship of health care and the humanities.

His most important committee assignments at UT Austin include the

Rhodes, Marshall and Truman Scholarships Selection Committee and the

chairmanship of the Hamilton Book Awards Selection Committee in 2017.

Sonnenberg

serves on numerous editorial boards and peer review panels of leading

journals in the fields of psychiatry and psychoanalysis. He has

contributed scholarly articles to the leading journals in those fields,

is the co-author of the textbook “Psychodynamic Psychotherapy” (American

Psychiatric Press, 1991, 1998, 2004), which has been translated into

Russian, Mandarin, Taiwanese, Persian, and Japanese, and he is the

co-author of chapters in important textbooks of psychiatry. He is the

co-editor of “The Trauma of War: Stress and Recovery in Viet Nam

Veterans” (American Psychiatric Press, 1985). Early in 2013 the

award-winning book “CENTER 17: Space & Psyche,” which he co-edited,

was published by the Center for American Architecture and Design, School

of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin.

His research interests focus on the points of intersection of psychoanalysis, psychiatry, medical education, population health and other areas of scholarly inquiry. His subjects of study include war and violence; architecture in relation to health care; psychic trauma and PTSD; addiction and its treatment; education and effective teaching methods; medical humanities, ethics and the doctor-patient relationship; and health and human rights. In the past he has served as co-principal investigator of the Psychology of Deterrence Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; director of research of the Project on the Vietnam Generation at the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution; and research scholar at the Center for Psychology and Social Change, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School at Cambridge Hospital.